Free Republic

With each passing day, covid gets closer to being a distant memory.The seven-day average of new cases in the US is down to 77,700 in the US, 69% below the mid-January peak...... while in the top 5 European nations, the seven-day average has declined to 61,800, down 55% from the mid-January peak. US Covid-related hospitalizations have dropped by 50% and Covid-related fatalities are also continue to decline, with daily deaths almost 25% below the recent peaks in the US (at 2,560) and 30% below in the five major European countries (at 2,350).Globally, the 7-day average of new cases stood at...

Weekly unemployment claims unexpectedly surged last week, rising above 800,000 as the labor market recovery stalled. The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the report, compared to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg: * Initial jobless claims, week ended February 13: 861,000 vs. 773,000 expected and an upwardly revised 848,000 during prior week * Continuing claims, week ended February 6: 4.494 million vs. 4.425 million expected and an upwardly revised 4.558 million during prior week At 861,000, new jobless claims posted a surprise back-to-back weekly...

TipRanks JP Morgan Says These 3 Gold Stocks Could Surge 40% (Or More)Let’s talk about gold. The precious metal is the traditional safe haven investment, backed by its use – starting 5,000 years ago – as a reliable store of value. Investors looking to protect their portfolio and secure their wealth traditionally bought heavily into gold, and the price of gold has sometimes been used as a proxy (albeit an inverse one) for general economic health. In a recent report, investment firm JP Morgan took a long look at the state of the gold industry – specifically, the gold mining...

Far underneath the ice shelves of the Antarctic, there’s more life than expected, finds a recent study in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. During an exploratory survey, researchers drilled through 900 meters of ice in the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, situated on the south eastern Weddell Sea. At a distance of 260km away from the open ocean, under complete darkness and with temperatures of -2.2°C, very few animals have ever been observed in these conditions. But this study is the first to discover the existence of stationary animals — similar to sponges and potentially several previously unknown species — attached...

@daveweigel Unexpected statement from Paul Ryan: "It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans." More...

NBA ratings continue to be inexplicably low this month, with all of the Twitter chatter surrounding the league’s return not translating into an actual increase in viewers. When the NBA resumed its season at the end of July, many observers assumed it would be a ratings boon for all involved. Networks were starved for sports programming as a result of COVID-19, and basketball’s glut of big name stars should have converted into a ton of viewership. Only it didn’t. In the first week of action, the NBA’s ratings immediately sputtered. Rather than spiking due to an increase in hype and...

California’s Proposition 47 reduced a number of “non-serious, nonviolent crimes” that had previously been considered felonies to misdemeanors. Among those crimes were shoplifting, grand theft, receiving stolen property, forgery, fraud, and writing bad checks. In terms of the numbers, as long as the total value of the stolen property is under $950, it’s simply a slap on the wrist. That also means a thief may now steal something under that limit every single day and it will never rise to felony status. When you eliminate stiff penalties for criminal activity, you almost guarantee an increase in these types of crimes,...

Analysing microscopic crystals in the basalt and ejected material of two volcanoes in the Galápagos, the researchers discovered hidden systems of magma that are not so simple or predictable after all. Even though the Wolf and Fernandina volcanoes in the Galápagos have seemingly spewed the same basaltic lava for their entire existence, the new findings suggest they are sitting on a chemically diverse system of molten rocks, some of which have the potential to set into motion explosive activity. Just because these volcanoes appear boring on the surface doesn't mean the monotony will continue forever, the researchers say. While the...

May their shame be eternal. To the hack journalists of the left who sold the lie, to the paid-off scientists who ran misleading studies, to the larger medical community that didn’t stand up for the genuine studies, to the fund-grubbing worms at the NIH, CDC, and WHO, specifically Tedros Ghebreyesus, PhD, and of course, to the biggest swindler of them all, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ratface bastard who whored his considerable expertise to make money for his Big Pharma friends and grow his budget: may the world look upon you for what you are: scum. A surprising new study found...

Renewed shopping drove a record 17.7% increase in retail sales in May, though total spending remained below levels before coronavirus. May’s jump in retail spending marked the biggest monthly increase in records dating back to 1992, and followed the largest monthly drop on record in April, a revised 14.7% seasonally adjusted decline, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Retail sales totaled $486 billion in May, a level well below prepandemic levels. February retail sales, for instance, were $527 billion. The increase followed three straight months of declining retail sales, and offered an additional sign that the worst of the economic shock...

VIDEO Democrat economist Steve Rattner who, as you can see, predicted doom and gloom for employment in April was absolutely SHOCKED by the May jobs report which showed a sharp rise in employment. Also note that back in April he seemed to hopefully anticipate double-digit unemployment on Election Day. A possibility that was probably shattered by the latest jobs report.

May’s jobs numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday shocked economists, who expected something starkly different from the 2.5 million payrolls added and lower 13.3% unemployment rate. Economists estimated that the country would lose 7.5 million jobs. The unemployment rate was expected to hit 19%. In notes circulating following the release, dumbfounded economists struggled to get their jaws off the ground. “In one line: Rather startling,” wrote Pantheon’s Ian Shepherdson. “The biggest payroll surprise in history, by a gigantic margin.” ING’s chief international economist James Knightley called the report "simply astonishing." “Somehow the US jobs market has come...

Stocks rose sharply Friday after the U.S. May jobs report showed a surprise 2.5 million jump in payrolls and a drop in the unemployment rate to 13.3% as businesses began to reopen from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. How are benchmarks performing? The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +3.16% jumped 692.87 points, or 2.6%, to 26,974.69, while the S&P 500 SPX, +2.53% rose 68.63 points, or 2.2%, to 3,180.98. The Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.88% advanced 160.03 points, or 1.7%, to 9,775.85. On Thursday, the Dow ended 11.93 points, or less than 0.1%, higher at 26,281.82. The fourth straight gain matches a...

As late as April 2, Gov. Tony Evers (D), backed by Biden, supported holding the election in person as Wisconsin law requires. However, on April 3, Evers changed his mind and asked for the legislature to quickly amend Wisconsin law to allow all voters to vote by mail. The Wisconsin Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, refused to rush such a last-minute change into law, and thus the media was given a "Republicans are literally killing people" narrative.There's one major problem with that narrative: The in-person voting does not appear to have killed anyone. The state of Wisconsin could identify...

Governor Newsom: California’s COVID-19 peak may be lower than the state expected

One of the biggest arguments for paid leave for new parents has been an economic one: Research has repeatedly shown that women with paid time off after childbirth are more likely to keep working. But a new study, the largest to be done in the United States, found the opposite. In California, which in 2004 became the first state to offer paid family leave, new mothers who took it that year ended up working less and earning less a decade later. They averaged $24,000 in cumulative lost wages, it found. “I could feel the air going out of the room...

The only thing that rivals President Trump’s tally of kept promises is the endless list of inaccurate predictions his critics have made about the U.S. economy.  Of course, we heard these apocryphal predictions even before Donald Trump won the 2016 election. For instance, in October 2016, the far-left publication Politico boldly declared that “Wall Street is set up for a major crash if Donald Trump shocks the world on Election Day and wins the White House.” The ability of Trump’s critics to predict our economic future hasn’t improved with age. Throughout 2019, numerous so-called “economists” and “experts” have taken a...

U.S. manufacturing output rebounded more than expected in November, as the end of an almost six-week strike at General Motors plants boosted auto production. The Federal Reserve said on Tuesday that manufacturing production rose 1.1% last month after a downwardly revised 0.7% fall in October. Industrial output also rose 1.1% in November after a downwardly revised drop of 0.9% in October. Excluding motor vehicles and parts, overall industrial production and manufacturing output in November rose 0.5% and 0.3% respectively. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast overall manufacturing output would rise 0.7% and industrial output would increase 0.8% in November. Production...

CNBC's Jim Cramer said Friday no matter your view on President Donald Trump there's no denying we're living in the best labor market in more than a generation. "You can't contradict that these are the best numbers of our lives. You can't," Cramer, 64, said following the government report showing the U.S. economy created a better-than-expected 266,000 nonfarm jobs in November, with the unemployment rate dipping to 3.5%, matching a 50-year low. Economists had expected the jobless rate to hold steady at 3.6% last month. "People don't want to say good things" about the economy, said Cramer, echoing comments he...

<p>From Presidents Harry Truman to Donald Trump, the United States liberalized trade the most among developed countries. The average U.S. tariff on dutiable goods is 4.5%, with the average tariff on all goods sitting at below 2%. Meanwhile, U.S. goods face higher tariffs and many other barriers to entry abroad. Facebook still can’t operate in China, and U.S. tech giants face a “digital services” tax in France.</p>